Transport in the European Union
Europe's half a billion people depend on the more than 200,000 km of motorways that criss-cross the bloc (Photo: EUobserver.com)
HELENA SPONGENBERG
27.08.2008 @ 15:20 CET
EUOBSERVER / FOCUS – Transport of people and goods are crucial for the European economy and its competitiveness as well as for bringing citizens and cultures closer to each other. But the sector is in desperate need of a makeover to deal with its growth, its environmental impact and Europe's dependency on oil imports - which currently costs the bloc one billion euros a day.
More than 500 airports, 190,000 km of railways, 200,000 km of motorways. 35,000 km of waterways and 1200 seaports caters for the European Union's half a billion people every single day. The transport sector accounts for some €1000 billion – or over 10 percent of the EU total gross domestic product (GDP) – and employs 10 million people.
But the increase in traffic in the last few decades has created serious congestion problems in urban areas across the bloc, which in turn cause health problems and delays that could at the present rate cost the 27-member bloc one percent of its GDP by 2010 and therefore dent Europe's economic competitiveness on the global market.
Oil dependence
Every day, the EU imports an amount of oil worth over €1 billion, according Transport & Environment (T&E) – a group campaigning for sustainable transport. Cars are the single biggest consumer of oil in the EU, using around 40 percent of imports – or 4.4 million barrels every day – and costing €140 billion a year in oil imports or €750 for every EU citizen each year.
The European Union depends on foreign oil for 79 percent dependent of its needs, says T&E, with Russia and the Middle East each responsible for a third of the bloc's imports. Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia are each more than 90 percent dependent on oil from Russia, while Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are more than 40 percent dependent on the Middle East.
EU oil from the North Atlantic have already peaked and with a rising energy demand, EU foreign oil imports are rising at a time when energy-rich Russia is flexing its military muscle and political insecurity continues in the Middle East.
As the single largest user of petroleum and the most rapidly growing source of CO2 emissions, the transport sector is facing stringent environmental restrictions.
The European inland transport sector accounts for 21 percent of all EU CO2 emissions. Emissions from road transport rose 0.7 percent in 2006, while overall emissions in the 27 EU member states fell by 0.3 percent.
Aviation in the EU accounts for three percent of greenhouse gas emissions, while the figure for sea transport is relatively low in the EU. However, sea transport has lately become more of a worry as the sector is not covered by the Kyoto Protocol and has been lagging behind in cleaning up its act.
Major Achilles heel
Greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector continue to rise steadily. A growing transport – linked to a growing economy – demand has outweighed improvements made in the energy efficiency of various transport modes and the introduction of non-fossil fuels.
"Transport is today one of the major Achilles heels in the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. While most other sectors have reduced their emissions, the transport sector has increased its emissions," Danish climate and energy minister Connie Hedegaard said earlier this year.
She will be chairing the global climate conference to be held in Copenhagen in December next year, where it is hoped the world's industrialised countries will reach a new global climate deal to replace the current Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
Industrialised countries that are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, are required to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride) to on average 5.2 percent below their 1990 level, over the period 2008 to 2012.
However, the Kyoto Protocol does not provide for emissions from international flights and maritime transport - which are fast becoming big polluters.
The air traffic sector has by far had the biggest growth in the last decade with now 10 million flights a year. Last year the air traffic in the EU continued to grow by 5.3 percent despite high fuel prices and its greenhouse gas emissions increased by 87 percent between 1990 and 2006.
Commission White Paper
In 2001, the European Commission published a White Paper proposing 60 measures to revamp the EU's transport policy by 2010 in order to make it more sustainable and avoid massive economic losses resulting from pollution, congestion and accidents.
Since then the bloc has adopted regulations and recommendation on road safety, infrastructure and transport pollution, to mention a few.
A mid-term update in 2006 attempted to shift the policy more towards economic interests, which took into account recent objectives such as globalisation, enlargement, the Kyoto Protocol, energy efficiency, urban transport and the diversification of transport use.
The update looked at the more than 35,000 kilometres of waterways that connect hundreds of cities and industrial regions and the share of river transport, which accounts for seven percent of the total inland transport in the bloc. However, the share of inland waterway transport has the potential to reach up to 43 percent, argues the EU executive.
Sustainable and safe transport in Europe will be the subject of the informal meeting of European transport ministers gathering in France on 1-2 September.
The topics include EU's future action plan on urban mobility, which will be drawn up on the basis of the green paper presented last year by Jacques Barrot, the then European commissioner for transport.
The ministers will also discuss the commission's proposal for amending the green toll or "Eurovignette" directive, as well as looking at the conditions for making more use of sea transport in Europe by creating a so-called "motorway of the sea".
